Creswell 4th: Early start to full day

CRESWELL – Creswell sure knows how to put on an extra-special Fourth of July party.

The town – already famous for its Fourth celebrations, with a pancake breakfast, one of the biggest and best parades in the state, and an afternoon full of fun, food, and music at Holt Park – has another featured attraction for those who want to make a full day of it before the fireworks.

The Hell On Hooves Tour made its hoofprints in Creswell for the second straight year Saturday, and if organizers have their way, it will be the start of a longstanding tradition.

“We look forward to this show because this is our hometown and a lot of us are from here,” said Amanda Davis, the tour’s marketing manager and a Creswell resident herself. “We’ve put a lot of sweat and grit and tears into this thing for the last few weeks, so to see it all come to fruition is great, and at the end of the day we can hang out and relax with our friends and family who are local, and it means a lot more.”

The rodeo was a huge hit with fans. Courtney Long, the tour director, likens July 4 to “Cowboy Christmas” because there are so many rodeos going on at the same time.

“Everyone loves it,” Davis said. “Creswell is always great for the Fourth of July, and we try to put on a great family-friendly atmosphere. Adding this to the Creswell lineup, we’re glad to be a part of it.

“Everyone looks forward to it – from start to finish, starting with a pancake breakfast and ending it with live music, I don’t know a better way to spend the Fourth. … Having the rodeo here now gives the City a chance to keep people here all day long.”

An early start

Saturday was an early morning for the Robinette family.

“We’re with the church that put the breakfast on, so we started at 6 a.m. this morning,” said Travis Robinette.

“We served until it was time to close it down, and people were like, ‘Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute!’” his wife Tanya said.

New Hope Baptist Church has been assisting with the July 4 breakfast for the past three years.

“The parade was really good,” Travis said. “There were some minor hiccups – there seemed to be some longer-than-usual breaks in-between floats – but other than that, everything was great. … I think it was the biggest parade with the most stuff I’ve ever seen.”

Travis, Tanya and their daughter Tay, who will be a seventh-grader at Creswell Middle School this year, actually moved to Creswell from Coos Bay on the Fourth of July.

“We moved in on the Fourth of July in 2018, but we missed everything when we got here,” Travis said, “so the next year we had the breakfast, and I said, ‘This is the best breakfast I’ve ever had! The pancakes were great.’”

There was no official word on Saturday’s crowd size, but several onlookers said it was the largest Fourth of July crowd they had ever seen.

And best of all, it was patriotic. All for one and one for all.

No division.

“You didn’t see any of that today,” Tanya said.

“You saw all walks of life out there today,” Travis said. “We love this town. I grew up in a small town much like Creswell, and we love living here. I think there were more people here today than we’ve seen in the seven years we’ve been here. … We came down 1st Street, and when we crested the hill, I said, ‘Have you ever seen this many people here since we’ve been here?

“And she said, ‘Well, it is the 250th anniversary. I think people want America to be a good place and for us to be a tight community. They want to see the good in people.’

“It’s good for our kids to see too,” Travis added.

Mark and Kellie Huffman are new to Creswell, having relocated from Springfield recently to be closer to work. They enjoyed their first Fourth of July in Creswell.

“Everything was red, white and blue; the kids were having fun, watching them chase candy, throwing candy, it was fun to watch,” Kellie said.

“This is a really nice event,” Mark said. “It was well put on. But it would be better if they had more food vendors – I had to wait well over an hour for those burgers.”

Travis and Tanya agreed that the wait for the burger was a bit long. “But it was well worth it! Those were the best burgers!”

Up and Adam

The biggest name appearing at this year’s Hell On Hooves Tour was freestyle motocross rider Adam Jones, who won eight medals (6 silver, 1 gold, 1 bronze) at the X Games among his long list of accomplishments.

At age 42 (next month), the longtime Reno resident doesn’t ride competitively but he still rides shows and exhibitions and performs stunts with the best of them.

“I do it for a job; this is my work, and I work hard at being good at my work,” Jones said Saturday. “And I’m lucky to have the type of work that I do. This started out as fun, then turned into a job and then turned into a career.”

He says it’s a labor of love “as much as anything can be when you’ve done it for 30 years of your life.”

You have to love it to endure all the pain. He lost count of all the broken bones a long time ago.

“I grew up racing motocross and had a lot of injuries doing that, but that’s part of the learning curve of learning how to ride a dirt bike and learning how to do it well.

I don’t know how many broken bones – twenty-something?”

But there was never any thought of quitting. Not once.

“You don’t know any other way, so you just keep coming back for more,” Jones said.

“Our goal is to put on a great show for two hours that the fans enjoy, and I think that’s what happened,” Davis said.

The night wrapped up with a stirring concert by Austin Gilbert, who earned national fame on “The Voice.” Gilbert, also a former bull rider and an ex-veteran, sang the national anthem, too, just for good measure.